Author Archives: Department of German

German Studies Undergraduate Colloquium

Posted on March 2, 2014

March 29, 2014. Munk School of Global Affairs, Room 208N. Organized by Ulrike Kugler (Goethe-Institut Toronto), Christine Lehleiter (University Toronto) and Barbara Schmenk (University Waterloo). The event is co-sponsored by CERES. View the Read More »

Translating Ourselves: Mendelssohn’s ‘Living Script’

Posted on March 2, 2014

Portrait of Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786)

March 23, 2014. 10:00 – 17:00 Jackman Humanities Building, 170 St. George Street, Room 1040. Workshop presented by the Jackman Humanities Institute Program for the Arts on Translation and the Multiplicity of Languages. Organized by Willi Goetschel.Translation is the practice of negotiating difference and alterity. But what do we do exactly when we translate? As Eva Hoffmann puts it in her novel Lost in Translation, we also translate ourselves, and this experience of our own difference is what constitutes our identity. The basic moments that define translation as paradoxical if not impossible – substitution and equivalence as the constitutive transactions that ‘carry over’ only by way of conversion, change, and transformation – produce a logic that makes translation an act that resists closure. Moses Mendelssohn introduced the striking notion of Scripture as ‘living script’ arguing that the practice of commandments represents an alternative framework for understanding law, text, and translation. Mendelssohn’s approach highlights the performative act as central to interpretation. This has productive consequences for the theorizing translation. For Mendelssohn, the notion of the ‘living script’ makes it possible to comprehend translation in terms of action rather than just a hermeneutic exercise or transfer of information. With this move, Mendelssohn offers ... Read More »

Forty-Ninth Conference on Editorial Problems: Rethinking Philology

Posted on October 1, 2013

Twenty-Five Years after the “New Philology” A Conference on Editorial Problems November 8-9, 2013 Jackman Humanities Building, 170 St. George Street, Room 100. Stephen Nichols Alexandra Bolintineanu Joel Fredell Emma Gorst Jessica Henderson William Robins Kathryn Starkey Markus Stock Michael Stolz Andrew Taylor   If you have an accommodation need, please contact german@chass.utoronto.ca by 2 November 2013. We gratefully acknowledge support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, the Centre for Medieval Studies, the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, and the Committee of the Conference on Editorial Problems.     Read More »